Sunday, 29 June 2008

Book ~ "Con Ed" (2007) Matthew Klein

From Amazon.com ~ At the start of Klein's amusing debut, one-time con man Kip Largo, who's been working at a dry cleaner since completing an eight-year stretch in prison for fraud, is intrigued when the gorgeous wife of Silicon Valley billionaire Edward Napier asks him to help her steal her husband's money, but not intrigued enough to follow through — at least not until he discovers that his not-bright son, Toby, owes several hundred thousand dollars to the Russian mob. Deciding that this is his chance to finally do right by his family, Kip sets about organizing a large-scale swindle to lure in Napier, all too aware that if he fails to pull it off, he and Toby (and the con's other participants) will all be killed. While the plot and characters tend to be by the numbers, the author's background information on how cons work is enormously entertaining.

I was going to give up on this book after the first couple chapters but I'm glad I didn't as I enjoyed it.

It was interesting to watch the con unfold, though I wasn't crazy about the ending, but I suspected it was coming.